At War With...?

Obama declares war on What Shall Not Be Named.

It
seems that, once again, "the war drums are beating along
the Potomac." On both sides of the aisle - indeed, on both
sides of the Atlantic - movers and shakers are looking in horror at the
bloodbath in Syria and Iraq. In a rare example of
bipartisanship,
politicians on all sides are demanding that the U.S. and the
world use military force to put an end to the inhuman barbarities going
on there. The TV pictures of thousands of starving women and children hiding
on a barren, remote mountain peak in northern Iraq are enough to shake
anyone,
as is news of the forced conversion of Yazidis at the point of the
sword. So far as we are aware, it's the first time
the word "Yazidi" has been spoken in American news, ever.

So a few
far-sighted politicians are realizing that there's
a battle to be fought against evil forces.
But against who or what exactly? Ah, that no-one
can say. Barack Obama,
with all the news sources at his command, still can't make up his
mind whether the enemy in Iraq is
"ISIS" or "ISIL" or something else, much less what that acronym stands
for. Even if we could agree on the name, that name wouldn't
explain the same
behaviors a thousand miles away in Libya. Although our media
offer no serious discussion of what motivates
these barbarians beyond the usual human lust for power, there's
something different about the latest barbarian hordes. While
there have been
countless conquerors throughout history, very few go
to such trouble to wipe out and destroy the lives of conquered
civilians instead of taxing them. Usually,
victors find defeated people to be a
useful resource to help them prepare for the next battle with
whomever's up the road.

Looking
back at history and into the archives of military
strategy, it should be obvious that we're missing something vitally
important. Thousands of years ago, the great military
strategist Sun Tzu wrote:

It is said that if you know
your enemies and know yourself, you
will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your
enemies but do know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do
not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every
single battle.

America has the most competent, best trained, and by far the
best equipped and most mobile military the world has ever seen.
Despite all those advantages, somehow we haven't managed to
truly win
a war in living memory.
If our problem is not the bravery and skill of our soldiers,
nor of the weapons with which they are equipped, it would seem that the
problem is more fundamental - and it's hard to find a more fundamental
requirement than knowing your enemy. This vital
responsibility is
precisely what our Commander in
Chief and every other opinion maker the world around has failed to do -
or more accurately, wilfully refused to do. We're fortunate
that
ISIS, or whomever they are, is so
barbaric that even our most fervent forces of cultural equivalence are
beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, some cultures might, but
only might, mind you, be better than others.

Are we to
endure yet another vastly expensive and draining war
that, at the end of the day, accomplishes nothing? If we
don't know what we're fighting against we'll never know when we've
defeated it, or more likely we'll just get tired and go home without
finishing the job. America has been protected from much of
the world's violence by two large oceans. We've got used to
the
luxury of being able to retreat behind our sea-walls. Can we
still rely on that when the world's worst hellholes are a half-day's
flight away, and when our majority party has been wholly committed for
half a century to
importing people from everywhere else without the
slightest regard for their character or beliefs?

Maybe we're
fated to keep boxing in the dark against we known
not what. Or maybe, as Scragged has said over and over, the identity of the
enemy is staring us in
the face but our leaders simply refuse to see it. Perhaps our
Gentle Readers are more perceptive than they?

Funny thing about War. (and we have been over complicating it since the conclusion of WWII - in my opinion)

While it is also known as the "Last Argument of Kings" it is also one of those states which could be entered without the ascent of the other party. (The other side only stands to lose, if they simply do not commit)

With that said, it is clear that we are already the recipients of such a declaration. (The die has been cast, like it or not) The problem here is; our politicians...who refuse to also understand what war is...a Last argument of Kings. War is not meant to be lead by politicians, it is to be led by Generals. (Since the political way out of a conflict, has long since past, since the shooting began.) It is meant to settle the argument by the simple idea of "Who ever is left standing, wins (or correct)"

We can have the best of every advantage to any armed conflict, and still come up with a less than satisfactory result (complete and utter victory...their inability, and unwillingness to continue the conflict) if we continue to allow our politicians to pretend that they are Generals, and our Generals to be pretend that they are politicians.

We will never win, till those 3 things are understood1) War is not mutually entered (like say a treaty) - it is unilateral2) Politicians are not Generals3) Generals are not politicians